Frost’s history is a sobering chronicle of the U.S. government’s attempts – both successful and unsuccessful – to expatriate its citizens, and in so doing, define itself by exclusion. And she demonstrates that those efforts have mirrored the country’s contemporaneous racial, political, and social anxieties ... Frost provides plenty of historical context, detailing cases from the Dred Scott decision – in which the Supreme Court ruled that Black Americans could not claim U.S. citizenship – to the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II and the mass deportation of Mexican-Americans during the 1950s ... At just under 200 pages, Frost’s compendium threads history, debate, and lively detail into the stories of individual Americans who fought to verify their citizenship or exercise their full rights ... At times, Frost’s writing can sound like a textbook. Despite this occasional didactic tone, the book is an excellent primer on the importance of creating robust institutions that can check the formation of racist policies.
A sharp history that shows the precarious nature of American citizenship ... As law professor Frost demonstrates in this crisp, concise book, the revocation of citizenship from native-born or naturalized individuals often stems from the desire to deprive individuals and/or groups of their political and civil rights, with an eye toward deportation. The takeaway is that citizenship is conditional, a fact that is hardly news for Dreamers across the U.S. Significant legal history with lessons for all citizens.
An impressively researched survey of the U.S. government revoking, or failing to recognize, the citizenship of native-born and naturalized citizens ... Frost enlivens her case histories with vivid sketches of key litigants, and makes a convincing case that citizenship stripping has 'serv[ed] as a proxy for overt discrimination' based on race and ethnicity. This troubling investigation of American exclusionism hits the mark.
